The Ghent museums

A visit to Ghent’s museums is an experience. The themes are invariably original, the approach intriguing and the insights enriching. You’ll also find you are spoilt for choice with subjects ranging from design, visual art and photography, through psychiatry, nature, industry and technology to the minutiae of life and the eventful history of our city… But all the more reason to pay a visit to Ghent and discover something new!

The House of Alijn

Our everyday cultural heritage is a vast treasure-house of stories of things which pass but should never be allowed to pass into oblivion. And that’s what the House of Alijn is all about! A museum with a passion for daily life in the twentieth century. A museum with a wealth of stories to tell about the minutiae of life and life’s major events in the early twentieth century and in the post-war years.

Opening hours

Dr. Guislain Museum

Woodmen, simpletons, lunatics… all words used to describe the mentally ill. What does suffering from black bile mean? How was a hysterical woman treated? Down the ages, insanity has been treated with a mixture of magic and religion, constraint and care, control and science. Dr Jozef Guislain organized modern psychiatry in Ghent in the 19th century. The former Guislain Hospice, Belgium’s first psychiatric hospital (1857), now houses the Dr Guislain Museum.

Practical info

Opening hours

Tuesdays to Fridays 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays 1-5 p.m.
Closed on Mondays and on December 24th, 25th, 31st and January 1st

S.M.A.K.

Dynamic and idiosyncratic, that’s the Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art, S.M.A.K. for short. The permanent collection of important works by artists from home and abroad interacts with original, often daring temporary exhibitions, particularly one-man shows by established and budding artists. S.M.A.K. is a place for experimentation and innovation, but it also has an eye for the public space.

Practical info

Opening hours

Tuesdays to Sundays 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Closed on Mondays (except Easter Monday and Whit Monday), on December 24th, 25th, 31st and on January 1st

MSK

The Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent houses an enviable collection of old masters, including two panels by Hieronymus Bosch, important works by the Flemish Primitives and Netherlandish art from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The collections from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are of international repute. As well as masterpieces by Théodore Géricault and the Barbizon artists, the museum provides an overview of modern art from romanticism to surrealism, including world-famous works.

Practical info

Opening hours

Tuesdays to Sundays 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.Closed on Mondays (except Easter Monday and Whit Monday), on December 24th, 25th, 31st and on January 1st

MIAT

MIAT is a vibrant museum, housed in a fine industrial building. It organizes exhibitions, workshops, museum games, film Sundays, matinées and soirées... and the thread running through them all is industry, labour and textiles. Learn all about the industrial society and marvel at the stories told by textile workers. Admire the Mule Jenny spinning machine and the oldest extant twine mill in north-west Europe, two of the collection’s showpieces.

Practical info

Opening hours

Tuesdays to Sundays 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.Closed on Mondays (except Easter Monday and Whit Monday), on December 24th, 25th, 31st and on January 1st

STAM

STAM , the City Museum on the Bijloke, provides the perfect introduction to Ghent. STAM ’s permanent circuit tells the story of the city. Yesterday, today and tomorrow converge to give visitors a feel for what exactly it is that makes Ghent Ghent. The temporary exhibitions take a more universal approach and look at what makes a city a city. STAM ’s showpiece? Ghent itself, the living city.

Practical info

Opening hours

Tuesdays to Sundays 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.Closed on Mondays (except Easter Monday and Whit Monday), on December 24th, 25th and 31st and on January 1st

The World of Kina

Discovering and experiencing – that’s what museums are all about and nowhere more so than the World of Kina! Did you know that some shells weigh almost 200 kilos? Find out how a mammoth’s thighbone compares to your own. Look down at the floor and you’ll see scores of fossils. Hug a mushroom. Marvel at the clever cobwebs and the busy bees... At the World of Kina you’ll discover far more than you had bargained for!

Opening hours

Design museum Gent

A day in Ghent is not complete without a visit to the Design museum Gent. The only one of its kind in Flanders, the museum specializes in twentieth-century and contemporary design. It has one of the most beautiful art-nouveau collections in the country and also mounts interesting temporary exhibitions. The intriguing designer collection is presented in a modern, light and airy building.

Practical info

Opening hours

Tuesdays to Sundays 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.Closed on Mondays (except Easter Monday and Whit Monday), on December 24th, 25th, 31st and on January 1st

St Peter’s Abbey

St Peter’s Abbey is one of Ghent’s foremost monuments. Concealed behind its imposing walls is a surprisingly large garden with a vineyard, herb garden, fruit trees and ruins. The buildings you see today date from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the impressive refectory from the Middle Ages. St Peter’s Abbey presents historio-cultural, literary and photographic exhibitions at national and international level.